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Updated: Nov 16, 2025
Controlling Parkinson's Disease With Adaptive Deep Brain Stimulation
Published on: July 16, 2014
Sleep electroencephalographic asymmetry in Parkinson's disease patients before and after deep brain stimulation
Georgia Sousouri1, Christian R Baumann2, Lukas L Imbach3
1Child Development Centre, University Children's Hospital, Zürich, Switzerland; Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zürich, Switzerland; Center of Competence Sleep & Health Zurich, University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.
Objective:
Unilateral manifestation of motor dysfunction is a prominent hallmark of Parkinson's disease (PD). We investigated how the motor laterality of the disorder affects sleep neural asymmetry before and after Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS).
Methods:
Twenty-seven PD patients of the akinetic-rigid subtype were studied; 11 with right dominant (RD) and 16 with left dominant (LD) motor symptoms. Neuronal sleep asymmetry was computed as the difference of sleep slow-wave energy (SWE) between left and right hemispheres. We used linear mixed models to assess the relationship between symptomatic profile and SWE asymmetry.
Results:
LD PD patients exhibited frontal electroencephalographic (EEG) asymmetry and motor laterality pre-DBS with increased SWE contralateral to their affected body side, which diminished post-DBS. The RD group did not exhibit neither neural asymmetry nor motor laterality pre- and post-DBS. There was a significant negative correlation between the motor laterality and sleep EEG asymmetry.
Conclusions:
Our results suggest evidence for a local use-dependent modulation of SWE as a result of the lateralized pathological motor profile. More bilateral motor symptoms and optimized treatment contribute to diminished sleep EEG asymmetry.
Significance:
These novel findings about the association between symptomatic motor laterality and sleep neural asymmetry may provide targeted therapeutic insights.
